Yesterday’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to write about a colour. So – as it’s nearing the end of the month and I (as I’m sure many others participating in NaPoWriMo!) am lacking a bit of original chutzpah, I ‘outsourced’ some of the legwork…

This morning, I asked (via Facebook) what my friends’ favourite colour was and why. Then this evening, once some fine folk had commented, I used the colours and imagery they provided to write a poem: to ‘paint’ each stanza using their colour and some of the images they offered, so it reads a bit like a paint-chart of pictures.

Thanks to those who commented and I hope you like what I’ve painted with your colours 🙂

Painting Friends’ Palettes

or, Imagine These Colours

Since shiny is your favourite distraction, imagine:

a peacock waltzes with a mackerel

whirling in a beetle-shell ship

within a bubble made of

iridescent micro-chips.

Then, a silvery-grey wish:

a graphite bike-chain of granite

powers a sleek silverfish

made of satin, its eyes

burnished baubles

of copper.

See the bright spring green

of the grass of the garden

at work. Passionate petrichor*

of plant’s breath. What eyes are for.

The opposite of death. The endless

easy elegant obviousness

of each leaf.

In a home by the

duck-egg Dorset sea,

the colours of raw plaster

ripple intently across rooms;

their walls flowing gently

into the shapes and shades

of the waves.

And turquoise bright writes

cheerful

in summer seas and skies,

where a deep purple kite flies

in your spirit, tethers you

with a line of light

from the eyes.

*’petrichor’ is an old/disused word for “The pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell.” I like to think of it as the plants breathing a sigh of relief…